Medtronic and Boston Scientific have announced plans to start phase 2 clinical trials this year for their updated renal denervation catheters. The once promising new technology is intended to treat hypertension unresponsive to drug therapy. The failure last year of Medtronic’s Symplicity HTN-3, the first large pivotal trial to rigorously test renal denervation, sent manufacturers back to their drawing boards to redesign the devices.

The FDA’s Circulatory System Devices advisory panel gave an extremely cautious endorsement on Wednesday to Boston Scientific’s Watchman device, a novel catheter-delivered left atrial appendage closure device for people with atrial fibrillation. They signaled that although they thought the device should be made available they also thought that there should be significant restrictions on its use.

On Wednesday Boston Scientific’s Watchman device will once again appear before the FDA’s Circulatory System Devices advisory panel. The Watchman is a novel catheter-delivered left atrial appendage closure device which is intended to be used in place of chronic warfarin therapy to lower the risk of stroke in people with atrial fibrillation. It has been under development for more than a decade and its approval has twice been postponed by the FDA. Briefing documents released ahead of Wednesday’s panel suggest that the third time may not be the charm for Watchman, though close FDA watchers believe the device may ultimately squeak through.

Boston Scientific hopes the third time will be the charm. The company disclosed on Tuesday yet another obstacle in the path to approval for its novel Watchman left atrial appendage closure device for the prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. Although it has already been before two FDA advisory panels, the company said that it had been informed by the FDA that it will need to undergo yet another advisory panel before gaining approval.

Although the device has not been approved in the US– and will not be approved without further clinical trials– in Europe and other places it remains on the market. So the questions about the technology’s future revolve around the future direction of research in the field and how the existing renal denervation market will be affected by the trial results.

The FDA’s Circulatory System Devices Panel yesterday gave a vote of confidence to Boston Scientific’s Watchman left atrial appendage closure device for the prevention of stroke in atrial fibrillation patients. By a large majority the panel agreed that the device was effective, that it was safe, and that the benefits outweighed the risks. In each case the vote was 13-1.

Wells Fargo analyst Lawrence Biegelsen predicts that the panel will be “contentious” but that ultimately the device will be approved next year. Although the trial missed one of its three c0-primary endpoints, the FDA reviewers emphasis on “the totality of the data” suggests a more benign FDA perspective, he writes.

One knowledgeable observer, Sanjay Kaul, who has served on several FDA panels, thinks the panel will indeed be contentious….

Despite the enormous increase in the use of stents in recent decades, there is little or no good evidence comparing their use to the alternatives of CABG surgery or optimal medical therapy in patients also eligible for these strategies. Now two new meta-analyses published in JAMAInternal Medicine provide new evidence that the alternatives to PCI remain attractive and that some of the growth in PCI may have been unwarranted.

Last year the FDA approved Boston Scientific’s subcutaneous ICD, the first ICD that can defibrillate the heart without using leads threaded to the heart through the blood vessels. Those leads are the source of many sophisticated pacing features in today’s ICDs, but they are also the main source of ICD-related complications, and, in several well-publicized incidents, have forced the FDA and ICD companies to initiate recalls. Now a prominent cardiologist writes that the S-ICD poses an “existential crisis” for previous generations of ICDs.

FDA approval of the S-ICD was based on a pivotal trial designed to assess the device’s safety and effectiveness. Results of the trial have now been published in Circulation. In this nonrandomized trial, the S-ICD was successfully implanted in 314 patients out of 321 in whom the implnantation was attempted.

Encouraging long-term results from the PROTECT AF trial comparing the Watchman left atrial appendage closure device to warfarin in atrial fibrillation patients were presented yesterday at the Heart Rhythm Society meeting in Denver.

Previously, the main results of the trial, published in the Lancet, demonstrated that the Watchman was noninferior to warfarin, but the total number of events in the trial was small. In addition, there were more safety problems, as might be expected, in the early days after implantation. The FDA required the company to perform a confirmatory trial. That trial, PREVAIL, has been the subject of considerable controversy. Now, long term followup of PROTECT AF may help better understand the risks and benefits of the device.

Vivek Reddy presented 4 year followup results from PROTECT AF. The primary efficacy endpoint– the combined rate of all stroke, cardiovascular or unexplained death and systemic embolism– occurred in 2.3% of the device group versus 3.8% of the warfarin group (RR 0.60, CI 0.41-1.05).

The biggest story at the American College of Cardiology meeting last week was the missing story. As reported here and just about everywhere else, the PREVAIL trial, probably the most-anticipated late-breaker of the meeting, was pulled from the program at the last minute by the ACC leadership after Boston Scientific broke the embargo by issuing a press release several hours before the scheduled presentation.

To understand this event we first need to know what happened in the week before the ACC. And there’s a major gap in the story that has not come out before that I think holds the key to a full understanding of the story.

More than a week before the scheduled presentation I received an email invitation from a PR firm representing Boston Scientific:

“If you have any interest in speaking about the trial under embargo with Dr. Ken Stein, chief medical officer, Cardiac Rhythm Management, Boston Scientific, I have a few slivers of availability early next week. As you know, the embargo lifts at the time of presentation and I’ll need written confirmation of your embargo agreement.”

Now I’ve been down this road before, as some of you may recall. Several years ago I was offered embargoed access to data from an important upcoming trial by Medtronic (suggesting that this is a systemic problem) under the condition that I agree to a briefing from a trial investigator. I told the company that I would respect the embargo but that I wanted to review the data on my own and that I would get back to them if I had any questions. Their response: no briefing, no data.

Here’s the problem in both cases: forcibly linking access to the trial data with a company-arranged briefing is an egregious perversion of the embargo system.

UPDATED–The already complicated story behind the PREVAIL trial, which was designed to confirm the safety and efficacy of the Watchman left atrial appendage closure device, just got even more complicated. This morning, after the trial’s sponsor, Boston Scientific, prematurely distributed to investors a press release summarizing the results of the trial, the ACC announced that the scheduled presentation of the results at the main opening session of the meeting would not take place.

By way of background, last week the trial’s sponsor, Boston Scientific, first announced that the principal investigator of the trial, David Holmes, would only “present the acute procedural safety results” from the trial. Then the company reversed itself two days later and announced that Holmes would present all three co-primary endpoints.

Holmes intended presentation this morning at the ACC in San Francisco makes clear why there was so much confusion. (The slides from his presentation have been made available to the media.) Although the trial results appear largely positive, the trial missed one of its three primary endpoints, and experts will likely spend a lot of time and energy trying to interpret the results.

Two big trials will highlight this year’s American College of Cardiology meeting in March in San Francisco. First is the PREVAIL trial testing Boston Scientific‘s long-anticipated Watchman left atrial appendage closure device for stroke prevention in patients with atrial fibrillation. Second is the detailed presentation of the controversial failed HPS2-THRIVE trial of extended-release niacin and laropiprant.